THERE are few to-dos on the annual schedule of household jobs less appealing, yet more important than the renewal of household insurance. For contents insurance, the price comparison websites, brokers and forms to fill in ask for a rough value of all of the worldly goods in your home. How to calculate the value of your prized dresser, handed down from granny? And then there’s buildings insurance and calculating the rebuild cost of your home. Few of us, relatively speaking, are surveyors: must we become proficient in measuring the cost of bricks and (lime) mortar in a few minutes to get the right insurance deal? No—but it surely feels that way.
For owners of listed buildings, the task of securing home insurance is not necessarily harder or more important—we all love our homes, whatever level of national importance they possess—but it can be fraught with more hazards. This much was hammered home to COUNTRY LIFE when, last month, a reader got in touch asking us to investigate why insurance on his two properties—one in London in a protected garden square, the other a Grade II-listed house in Gloucestershire— might have increased by 19% in the past year, with, most gallingly, a specific increase of 7.5% ‘for listed buildings’.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 29, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 29, 2023-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning